In her piece “Genre as Social Action, Miller rails against both the idea that categorizing genre is reductive and that normal methods of typifying and classifying genres fail to recognize the importance of any social aspect, to her the most important – but not only – way of recognizing genre. According to her, “Exigence is a form of social knowledge– a mutual construing of objects, events, interests, and purposes.”
In a way, writing within a known, established genre is at once restricting and freeing. From the beginning, the writer is aware of the genre’s conventions. This, however subtly, organizes their thoughts into somewhat pre-existing patterns and is naturally limiting. However, it also provides an unspoken undercurrent of communication between the writer and reader. The writer can take shortcuts, make bigger leaps, because writing within the bounds of a genre sets up certain expectations for the reader about how the writing will progress. The writer can move forward assuming that they and the reader are beginning somewhat on the same page. In a mystery novel, the reader can assume, based on the conventions of the mystery/detective novel genre, that the killer will be revealed near the end, and does not stress halfway through that the mystery hasn’t been solved yet, leaving the last hundred pages open for police paperwork and an extended scene of the detective going out to a nice dinner to celebrate his catch.
Of course, as Miller points out, it is important to see “the ways actual rhetors and audiences have of comprehending the discourse they use”. If authors were to, all of a sudden, decide that the killer is never caught at the end, but at the beginning or never at all, then expectations would shift. The general social consciousness would have a different public perception (of course, as Miller argues, “exigence must be located in the social world, neither in a private perception nor in material circumstance,” but the altering of so many personal perceptions would have no choice but to alter the overall social perception as well), although this begs the question of whether the genre’s formal conventions would shift, or whether more subsets of the genre would simply appear.
In public writing, based on Miller’s standards, things get more complicated. Because she’s right – especially within the realm of public writing, social constructs are more important for determining genre than any formal features, or even intention (which, as Miller argues, is different from exigence). Concepts and words open to the public are under social power. /it was pointed out to me recently that the concept of pampering oneself takes on different meanings and flavors among social classes: for the rich and middle class, it is self-care, an important part of staying mentally and physically healthy. For people in the lower class, it is an irresponsible waste of money. The rhetoric, and public priorities concerning an individual’s health, change. The same action has different names because of our backgrounds, experience, history, feelings, politics, and connotations.
This has parallels to genres within texts. Miller maintains that “It is through the process of typification that we create recurrence, analogies, similarities. What recurs is not a material situation (a real, objective, factual event) but our construal of a type.” The same exact text, the same material object, could appear in a love letter, a prayer, or a eulogy. But those are both distinct genres. The main difference is in their usage.
In terms of public writing, it’s important to be aware of the myriad reactions people can have based on their segment of the social consciousness, and condense that into something approachable. The social perception of anything is inherently complex, and the onus is on the writer to harness all of this. More than with most kinds, public writing has to be written with an absolutely acute awareness of what action it is being used to accomplish.